Mobile electronic devices such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are becoming increasingly popular. Such devices utilize microprocessors that make them highly adaptable communications devices. Some of these devices have additional functionality that can be integrated or added through expansion ports.
One type of useful functionality that can be added to electronic communications devices is the reception of wireless broadcast signals such as radio or television signals. Even with the growth of the Internet and other digital technologies, wireless broadcast communications are still widely used. Therefore it is beneficial to add such functionality to two-way communications devices to enhance their usefulness.
In order for mobile communications devices to be desirable replacements for existing stand-alone receivers, the communications devices must not only provide replacement functionality, but must provide additional benefits to the user that justifies the additional costs of including such features. Adding rich features to mobile communications devices is possible due to the programmable nature of the device, although there are inherent limits in such devices.
Mobile devices have much stricter power consumption limitations than other electronic devices; therefore the processors and memory on these devices are necessarily limited. For this reason, software on mobile devices (especially telephones) is often specially written for the target hardware to enhance performance and reduce memory usage. The disadvantage to this specialization is that it is more difficult to add functionality in the form of additional programs, particularly programs that should be able to run on a wide range of devices.
What is needed is a way to add new functionality to a broadcast receiver module on a mobile communications device. Further, such functionality should be able to run on a wide variety of devices to enhance compatibility and acceptance among users. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over prior art approaches.